“Great maintenance troops and depot maintenance help keep the BUFF flying. In earlier days, many were on ground alert and not accumulating a lot of hours.” [Skybird, post 28]
“I once toured a B-52 in Orlando in the 1980s and can attest first hand that it is roomy and sturdy. At the time, the area still had a local SAC wing that was tasked with being ready for nuclear war...” [Rockingham, post 43]
USAF aircraft maintenance is superior to all other service components. Along with Boeing’s design & construction standards, it helps explain the B-52H’s longevity. Not bad for what was originally an interim design, a stopgap system.
Early B-52 operations actually piled on flight hours more quickly than later ones. Strategic Air Command kepts some aircraft on airborne alert until 1968 (Operation CHROME DOME mounted sorties running to 24 hrs aloft). And training sorties regularly went past 13 hours. This changed some after the oil crunches hit in the 1970s: training sorties were reduced some, to 8 to 11 hours.
Lots of cruising under conditions that did not stress the airframe much; this changed some as low-level training became the norm after the 1960s. The B-52 isn’t considered a high performance machine: limited bank angles and maneuvers keep G loadings low.
Rockingham may be confusing crew accommodations with other interior spaces. In actuality the bomber’s crew compartments - pressurized for high altitude flight - are small compared to airliners and airlifters. There is no place to stand fully erect, save at the base of the ladder leading from the lower deck to the upper deck. Applies to crewmembers even of the shortest stature.
The rest of the fuselage is more capacious, though a good deal of it (more than 100 ft of the fuselage is behind the crew compartment) is occupied by wheel wells for the retracted main undercarriage, fuel tankage, and electronic components. Spaces behind the rear main wheel wells are cavernous.
The B-52 Rockingham toured in the 1980s at Orlando had to have been visiting from some other base. SAC closed down its bombardment wings in Florida (McCoy and Homestead) in the 1960s. Orlando International uses the facilities of what had been McCoy AFB.
I crewed B-52Gs and Hs in the late 1970s, and the B-1B in the late 1980s. At other times, I performed operational tests on both aircraft, and a great many other military systems. Spent lots of time crawling through and around B-52s.
You are correct that the end of the Vietnam War led to the removal of B-52s from McCoy. With my recollection chastised, corrected, and refreshed, I think my tour of the B-52 was in that time frame when I returned home from college on break. I vaguely recall local news coverage to the effect that the open house for long-secret areas like the nuclear bunkers and front line aircraft at McCoy was a way for SAC to say goodbye to the Orlando area.
Crawling around inside B-52s, I can imagine that you saw a few odd things. My closest comparison is as a teen poking into and crawling around inside an old Navion airframe that my father was restoring. Tasked with eliminating wasp nests, I was armed with a can of insect spray, a flashlight, a small hand broom, and a rag. Somehow, I never got stung -- and my father still owns the Navion, nicely restored and a little older than even the B-52.